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An Open Letter to the Radical Leftists Against #GamerGate

To all the “social justice warriors” who oppose #GamerGate-

If you’re actually reading this and haven’t burst a blood vessel, congratulations. It’s no secret that SJWs and Right-wing folk have visceral, intense, painful reactions to seeing what the other side have to say. We hate each other. I won’t even try to extend an olive branch, because I know we’re both conditioned to reject it on instinct. For those of us radicals on the internet, co-existence is no longer an option. I would gladly purge you all from gaming and polite society just as much as you all would love to purge me. As I like to say, “such is life in the zone.”

But even as the right-wing lunatic that I am, let me throw out a little offering anyway. Congratulations, when it comes to gaming, we on the radical right have lost. Hell, it’s not like we even had a chance to begin with. In all matters related to gaming, I will throw in the towel on behalf of all of us to the right of the overton window. Go on, savor the moment, take your screencaps for your subreddits and twitters and tumblrs, celebrate our concession. Take all the time you need.

But whatever you do, don’t go ahead and pat yourself on the back. See, you didn’t win either. In fact, you lost just as much as we did. Your utopian endgame vision for gaming as a medium is just as unrealistic and infeasible as ours. You cannot stop or fight #GamerGate- indeed, in regards to #GamerGate I’ll claim that we’ve already won. We’ve won for some time now, everything at this point is just meaningless semantics, simple trivial shit-flinging over superficial, replaceable entities. But how did we win, you ask? Simple. We got Anita Sarkeesian to go on the Colbert report.

I know, I know, the statement is confusing as hell. This was a crowning victory in most of your minds, a major coup over #GamerGate. And yet, here I am claiming it’s your defeat? But trust me, in due time it will all make sense.

I’ll start my explanation by linking you to a wonderful talk given by a personal hero of mine named Jack Donovan. Yes, I know the talk being given at American Renaissance will set off red flags for the handful of you who have even HEARD of AmRen. But if you’re not sold, let me just tell you that this is a talk from an openly gay man denouncing the evils of capitalism. Confused? So were plenty of AmRen followers if some of the youtube comments were any indication.

But Donovan’s critique of capitalism and the market actually touches on what is arguably one of the key tenants of neoreaction: the idea of an invisible, intangible entity undermining identity, heritage, and tradition. This is the corporate arm of what me and other neoreactionaries refer to as “the cathedral”. For more information on that, I could direct you to Mencius Moldbug’s A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservationsor my own quicker, more video game-influenced explanation, Oliver Cromwell and the Patriots. But, if even that is too long for you, I’ll give you an even quicker summary: the cathedral is a memetic entity that exists primarily in the media and academia. It’s the zeitgeist of the past several centuries. By being a progressive who fits within the bounds of the overton window, you are assimilated into the cathedral, helping slowly move that window further and further to the “left”. Visualize it as Cthulhu swimming through the ocean, towing all of humanity behind him on a boat. Cthulhu moves in one direction, periodically taking minor twists and turns, starts and stops. Those who try to push the boat ahead of him or pull it away from him are destined to fail. Only those loyal cultists who unquestioningly accept his erratic navigation will prosper.

So how, you ask, does any of that pertain to Anita? See, a common myth that only neoreactionaries oppose the cathedral. However, marxists, maoists, trotskyites, anarchists, all of the radical left groups are just as opposed to the cathedral as the neoreactionaries- they just don’t know it. They see only the economic and tangible aspect to it, the corporate wing that I think Jack Donovan so eloquently describes. Progressivism is a lucrative business, after all. In creating a more “progressive” society you also create an ideal consumer class, so devoid of identity that they’ll buy whatever you sell them if it fills the void in their soul. And yet, these radical leftists fail to understand that it is the more deeper, insidious nature of the cathedral and its memetic societal conditioning that prevents them from building their glorious egalitarian utopia. The capitalist profit-driven hierarchy is here to stay, simply because it works for all the right people. Hell, a good bit of neoreactionaries have accepted it and simply want to make it more efficient and productive. Any sort of radical leftist who opposed the cathedral is going to be tossed to the side.

And of course, no one best personifies these leftists rejected by the cathedral like good old Suey Park. Remember her? Are you cringing internally? If you are, then maybe you’re not as radical as you try to pretend you are. But for those of you who still think the woman is a hero or a martyr or whatever, stick around, you’re my target audience right now. Give yourselves a pat on the back, you’re actual genuine radicals. Suey Park, as much as I mock her, was still a trailblazer daring to break out from what is acceptable progressive behavior and take it to the next level.

I think you know where I’m going with this. See, when #CancelColbert initially took off, and Suey Park was claiming to be harassed and getting threats, (I hear she’s in a PTSD support group with Melody Hensley) Anita decided that she would stand in solidarity with Suey Park. Not in the general public eye, of course, but she made a low-key, supportive remark. Suey Park is a feminist, Anita Sarkeesian is a feminist. Solidarity is a good way to build up a follower base, any organizer could tell you that.

But as it turns out, when #GamerGate takes off, and Anita gets an offer to go on Colbert, what does she do? She takes it with pleasure. Her media tour before then involved fairly non-controversial at the time publications like Game Informer or the Rolling Stone. But when she went on Colbert, that was a major turning point. Anita Sarkeesian, simply by accepting the offer and giving a friendly, non-aggressive interview with Colbert, threw Suey Park under the bus. Suey herself even called out Anita for doing so, trying to call her a sellout in the most diplomatic way she could.

And make no mistake about it, Anita Sarkeesian has sold out. Rather than try to change or reform gaming, she’s simply become a part of the massive industry machine. See, the reason the industry for the most part embraces Anita isn’t because of any moral nonsense. Sure, you have your indie devs who drink the kool-aid and love it, but most AAA devs who run the show only care about making money in a time where profit margins are pretty damn slim. In their mind, Anita is a consultant who can help make their games more profitable by appealing to new demographics. If Dragon Age 3 wasn’t a buggy mess with terrible art, animation, writing, voice acting and coming from a publisher right off the heels of two notorious flops, I guarantee it would have broken sales records. The game does exactly what Donovan describes, it tries to pander to every single group of people imaginable. Male and female, black or white, gay or straight, everyone gets some pandering. The marketing is truly impressive.

And that’s where on the culture wars, we’ve both lost. We still have to see degenerate nonsense polluting the medium, and you still have to see oppressive hegemony-enforcing content. Because in both cases, those are where the money’s at. And in the end, as #GamerGate’s shown, it’s money that rules this industry, not ideology. Geoff Keighlely let TotalBiscut, a noted #GamerGate supporter be on the ballot for “Personality of the year” despite being anti-#GamerGate himself. Because TB brings in money. Zoe Quinn does not make your company money. Brianna Wu does not make your company money. The number of people who hate #GamerGate enough to cut ties with people endorsing it in the slightest is insignificant compared to the vast amount of #GamerGate supporters who would be happy never to see those women on TV again. Indeed, I think it’s a given at this point that none of those women have done anything to help bump a TV rating or get their hosts publicity. The only person to interview these ladies and walk away with a larger fanbase is David Pakman, and we all know how you people feel about him.

So #GamerGate has made progressive ideology a much more volatile commodity. Gone are the days of being able to say whatever radical stuff you want and get away with it. Now if you don’t fall in line as a nice little corporate monkey for the cathedral, you are gonna be signing your own death warrant. There are hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are cathedral-approved progressives, who will not take kindly to your words or actions. You have lost the ability to rock the boat with zero repercussions. You better make sure that your brand of “social justice” is going to make an AAA studio more money, or else you’re out of luck.

And this brings me to my question to all of you: why bother? You can’t win. The best you can do is continue to exist inside your little clubhouses, withering away as your abrasive radical politics continue to drive off money. AAA games will continue to make more money than yours. They will continue to gain the widespread acclaim and love that you never will. People will celebrate Dragon Age as the bastion of progress while Revolution 60 and Depression Quest slowly slide into obscurity. All of you will join me in the dustbin of video game history, easily forgotten and ignored. Your best bet to pursue progress will be to sell out like Anita did, ignoring your radical roots in order to appease the rich capitalists and become a good PR lapdog. Sure, you’ll be turning your head from plenty of injustices in the industry, but developers will stop using terrible clichés in their games!

In conclusion, the flow of progress cannot be controlled or dictated or stopped. #GamerGate, like it or not, is part of that flow. The status quo will never truly change, only undergo minor cosmetic alterations. I do hope this letter is an eye-opening experience, but given that most of you tend to favor political esotericism, I doubt that this is anything other than a rehash of what you know already, albeit from a source you’d probably want to see strung up from a tree. And if that’s the case, maybe you and your enemies have more in common then you’re willing to admit.